Google’s Ads Transparency hub finally lets you see more about who is behind an ad

Google’s making it easier to find out more information about the advertisers behind the ads you see across search, YouTube, and the other sites where Google shows ads. The search giant has announced that it’s launching an Ads Transparency Center, a “searchable hub” containing a library of ads from verified advertisers.

Some of the information available in the hub includes a list of the ads an advertiser has shown and which regions they appeared in as well as the last date and format in which it ran an ad.

You can search for specific ads by heading to the Transparency Center directly or by selecting the three-dots menu that appears beside an ad you want more information about. From there, click the option that says “see more ads this advertiser has shown using Google,” and you’ll get redirected to the Transparency Center. Google says it plans on launching the Ads Transparency Center globally “over the coming weeks.”

The launch of Google’s Ads Transparency hub seems very... late. While Google introduced the My Ad Center last year, which lets you customize the types of ads you see by liking, blocking, or reporting ads, it never really provided more information about specific advertisers and their ads until now.

This is something Meta has been doing for years, as Facebook first launched its Ad Library in 2019. Twitter also introduced an Ads Transparency Center in 2018, although it only now contains archived data of the political ads that ran through 2018 and 2019. Meanwhile, Google first started doubling down on ad transparency in 2020 when it started requiring that advertisers verify their identities and later began letting users access information about an advertiser’s campaign in 2021.